


Tainted Love

by agoodwoman



Series: Instinct Over Reason [13]
Category: The X-Files RPF
Genre: F/M, Peter Morgan - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-08
Updated: 2017-07-23
Packaged: 2018-11-29 10:52:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 22,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11439342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agoodwoman/pseuds/agoodwoman
Summary: On set for Season 11, tension runs high and frustrations come to blow.





	1. Just a Hit

Feeling like a petulant child, she stormed off the set as soon as they called cut. They told her to ‘take ten’ which meant they would take an hour. When she got to her trailer, she shut the door with too much force and threw her phone on the couch.

Right now with the way she was feeling, she didn’t want to talk to anyone.

It wasn’t fair how much being back on set brought up old feelings. Last time they were here, they stole quiet moments together and she could reassure herself that the time apart from her children was worth it. It got Piper a job, the boys were with their dad and this was for a dedicated fan base that made her a star.

This year, she didn’t care so much about the latter.

At the time, they had each other and that felt like so much more than enough. She had David to keep her company and provide a solace from her pangs of loneliness. It was the most fun she had experienced with him in Vancouver that didn’t have guilt associated with every kiss and touch.

This year wouldn’t be like that.

Today, she was kissing him for a job and she was angry at the irony of it.

Mulder and Scully were finally written a scene with a glimmer of romance and a proper kiss with good lighting. With only a few layers of clothing between their bodies, he pulled her to him and thread his fingers into her hair in a way that was too familiar. His tongue slipped into her mouth and she tried to moan as her character instead of her own self. She was a woman feeling the early embers of desire inside her who needed this kind of kiss like she needed her next breath.

Except she wasn’t supposed to be kissing him anymore. Not since her recent romantic development with Peter became public. That had complicated how she navigated more of her personal life than she cared for but he had laid down an ultimatum and she wasn’t prepared to make a fool of herself again.

It had already been a long day. She was playing a woman who had left the man she loved for over twenty-five years. A man stood opposite her who was constantly described as her protector and endangerer. The parallels to Scully were too close to home at this moment, except she came home. Scully found a happy medium whereas Gillian never fully returned to whatever mess she and David had tried to work through after her book tour of New York City in March. Now they were just two people with incredible chemistry and a lot of tension. Apparently this status worked for them because the directors kept reassuring them that they were doing great. Until today, when they were set up to have an emotional moment with open mouthed kisses that Chris wouldn’t be able to cut in post-production. There was too much important dialogue surrounding the kiss that they needed to convey in the rest of the episode.

After nine takes, James looked up from the monitor and shook his head. “Sorry guys. We are gonna reset and try a better angle. Take ten, okay?”

More takes meant more kissing.

“What’s the problem?” David asked as he wiped the edges of his mouth.

“It’s not you guys,” James assured them but she could see he wasn’t being totally truthful.

The chemistry felt the same when they read the lines and lost themselves in a scene. Maybe kissing each other now looked as pained as it felt.

It wasn’t her desire to do sex scenes at all but now it felt cruel. He was so indifferent to her while she realized she still wanted him.

Her phone buzzed and she almost hoped it was David, asking her to talk.

_“Darling, we need to talk. ~ P”_

_Not right now_ , she thought. It was always a bad idea to talk to him when she was feeling punchy.

David wasn’t texting her these days to check in, to calm her nerves or to pop by her trailer with pieces of cake for an impromptu food fight that turned sexual.

She tossed the phone back on the couch and told herself to call him when she was done for the day, no matter what the time difference. That way he couldn’t accuse her of ignoring him.

The desperation for a cigarette between her lips was too great. Knowing it would be a bad idea, she decided to raid David’s trailer for one. He lingered on set as he did after he and Téa got married. He hung out with the crew and made it clear he wasn’t too stuck up to mingle with anyone who had a small job behind the scenes. It was yet another way to prove he was a better person than she was.

Three weeks into filming and she felt the anxiety and desire bubbling up inside of her. She was going to crack. She needed a fix of something she had tried to quit frequently.

The relation to cigarettes and David Duchovny was painfully ironic.

She left her trailer and found herself alone on the lot. It was a rarity but it happened when everyone else was working hard to get the set ready for the actors. Her heels clicked on the wet pavement and she realized it had rained earlier but she had missed it. This time around she didn’t mind the rain but maybe she was feeling nostalgic for when she had less to lose and her whole life was in front of her.

 _Get a cig and get out of there_ , she told herself as she approached his door.

There were some bad habits she had spent years trying to break and sometimes she related David to being one of them. It was hard when something made you feel so good but could damage you if the extent of it became public. How do you admit to having an affair with the same man through three marriages and five relationships?

The lights were off inside. No one was lingering around outside where they were parked. This was easier than sending an assistant to buy her a whole pack because she just wanted one of whatever he had been smoking.

Slowly, she opened the door and kept the lights off. There was a creak of the floors as she moved towards the drawer where he kept his stash of cigarettes and other contraband.

There was a familiar groan muffled against fabric and she froze in the middle of the trailer.

He had someone in there and now she had walked in on them.

_How humiliating!_

She needed to get the fuck out of there but she couldn’t move.

He groaned again and she searched her eyes in the dark space as she tried to make out the frame of another body. Another moan that was definitely his and she felt her belly tighten.

 _Who could it be?_ she wondered.

Maybe the makeup assistant that wouldn’t stop touching his arm or the AP who laughed at everything he said.

 _Of course, he’s fucking funny. Men with giant cocks usually are because when a man can make your teeth rattle, everything he says is hilarious,_ she thought bitterly.

He groaned again and suddenly went still.

“Fuck,” he mumbled with a timber she definitely recognized. That was the tone he used right after he came.

Her foot hit the table she was about to pilfer the cigarettes from and she flinched.

“Is someone there?” he asked in a tone that she could hear he hoped he was alone.

She reached for the light switch by the sink and she saw him beyond the bathroom. He was closer than she expected, standing with a towel in one hand and his cock in the other.

“ _Jesus_!” he cursed and quickly turned to tuck himself back into his costume suit pants.

“Sorry!” she atoned and covered her eyes but the damage was done.

“What the fuck?” he asked as he walked towards her in the trailer.

“I was… I needed a cig,” she explained as she kept her eyes covered.

Her cheeks were definitely burning and the evidence of her embarrassment would have been blatant to him if he was looking at her. She still had her hand over her eyes so she couldn’t tell what face he was making.

“You _needed_ a cig?” he repeated and she could hear the disbelief in his voice.

She nodded.

“Next time just ask me before you run off the set when something isn’t going your way. Gillian, _what_ are you doing?” he asked and she heard a zip of his suit pants. “I’m decent.”

His indifference was aggravating if not also hurtful. He was annoying her as much as he was turning her on and she didn’t know how she felt about that.

As she lowered her hand, she could see him looking at her with a disinterested face.

“Sorry,” she repeated.

“Whatever,” he shrugged. “The smokes are in the second drawer.”

He walked past her to grab a small hand-rolled contraband from the small wooden box on the counter. He usually liked to smoke a joint after he came but it surprised her he would do that now when they were expected back on set soon.

She looked down at the second drawer and opened it slowly. A box of the brand of cigarettes she preferred was sitting on top. She used two fingers to pull the packet from the top and she closed it carefully, knowing his frustration with her for leaving cupboards and drawers open. She was aware she was interloping on his space and she felt anxious he could kick her out at any moment.

“Did you need more than one?” he asked.

Gillian shook her head. “Just needed a smoke.”

“Knock next time though,” he suggested as he pulled a lighter from his pocket and lit the cannabis. He sat down and took a hit. As he exhaled the smoke, he offered her the bud. “Need some? You seem _anxious_.”

He wasn’t emotional towards her or behaving hurt. He was behaving like a man who barely knew her when he was probably the person who knew her best. Maybe he was acting towards her like he could barely stand her because she had become someone he despised. More than once, he told her that she was like a stranger to him. Sometimes the person she had become felt more like a character than who she was. Lately, she felt like she hated that person too.

She walked across the small space and almost took the joint from his fingers. “I better not.”

“Oh, probably against the _rules_ now,” he guessed and she could hear the acerbic undertone but chose to ignore it. “Can I have a smoke?”

She walked towards him where he sat to hand him the pack as she tried to ignore the moist feeling in her panties. He had been here alone to release some tension in his body. She could picture his face and how he would do it exactly. Admittedly, that excited her.

Right now, she knew she should have taken some time to herself instead of invading his space. At least then she wouldn’t have the images of him stroking himself in the dark imprinted in her mind.

He looked up at her and into her eyes for the first time outside of their scenes. “Sit down. Stay a while.”

“Yeah?” she asked and sat slowly on the couch next to him.

“Or don’t,” he said with a shrug and took another drag.

She took the joint from his fingers and put it to her lips. “Don’t say anything.”

“Don’t boss me around. I don’t find it sexy anymore,” he hit back but there was a smile playing on his lips. “Can you remember any of your lines while you’re on that stuff?”

She exhaled slowly and rolled her eyes. “I’ll be ok.”

“So she says,” he muttered and took the joint back from her.

“Will you be okay?” she asked and avoid the underlying meaning in that question but it was there.

“ _Now_ she cares,” he quipped to no one else in the room.

“Did you ask me to stay so you could be a little mean to me?” she asked.

He looked down at the joint in his fingers and handed it back to her. “Maybe but you kind of deserve it.”

That stung but it was also true. She did deserve it. He called her a number of names she deserved too. He called her a fake, a fraud and a phony. He told her she was selfish and a liar. Out of anger, he told her that she disgusted him and at the time, she felt pretty disgusted with herself too.

It was convoluted and complicated more than they were used to. That was saying a lot for them but it was a mess when they were trying to make everything easier.

For the first six months of 2017, their plans to move forward as a couple actually fell apart. Things with Peter progressed, she listened to his advice more than not, took a job with one of his friends and became the worst version of an actress trope. Of course, she wasn’t sleeping with him for a job or the connections because she wasn’t that horrible and basic of a person. However, her connection to him wasn’t talked about over her work and it was refreshing for once.

By June, she found herself in Italy on a trip that was supposed to solidify how she felt privately. Instead, Peter had allowed paparazzi to follow them around Portofino and didn’t stop them from getting out. It was his petty way of staking his claim on her life. Afterwards, she had felt the private humiliation of a moment by the pool that had made her uncomfortable. He touched her as a lover did but then he pulled her swimsuit down beyond what could be a flirtatious moment between a couple. He rarely hugged or kissed her when anyone could see it but there, he was overt and distasteful.

As she washed her hands in the bathroom of the Italian eatery, she looked up at her face in the mirror. Sun and sex usually agreed with her better but she saw the restrictive diet and excessive yoga were beginning to catch up with her.

The wisps of hair David used to tuck down with his fingers before kissing her taunted her all through Portofino. She couldn’t look at herself in the mirror while she told herself that she would be able to show the world she was more than just one character. She had thought her body of work proved Dana Scully wasn’t the only thing inside her wheelhouse, except she knew that there was more to the X-Files story that had to be told.

She didn’t want it to go on without her. It felt strange to be so territorial over a project she barely wanted to do the last time around. It wasn’t her inclination to turn her back on friends and people who helped her but Peter had assured her that proving herself as more than Scully to David’s Mulder wouldn’t be an easy extraction.

Truth be told, she was fond of Peter but up until last year, he was never someone she would have entertained the idea of. He was married, although separated. Their combined backgrounds were messy and she had just run screaming from all of that.

After all the self-contradicting statements she made to the press, she found herself walking around a paparazzi-littered city in a dress that reminded her of Neil Young songs and a bracelet someone else gave her as a semi-promise.

To save face, she said nothing to him nor made a statement later about the invasion of her privacy. He put her in that position and she allowed him to because she had betrayed a trust. During her trip to New York City, she fell back into the arms of her old friend.

They had a wild night of infidelities that took her back to wrap parties for Californication. She told him before it happened that it wouldn’t and couldn’t. She told him during it that she hated him for how good he made her feel. She admitted to him afterwards that she was sorry. He told her that he was sorry too for putting so much faith in her when she wasn’t ready to be less than the star trajectory she had been told she deserved.

For two days after their coupling, she was sore because he fucked her so hard that she felt every molecule in her body expand from the ecstasy of his talents. The guilt of that coupling still lingered in her mind.

David snapped his fingers in front of her face. “Where did you go?”

“I was thinking about June,” she replied with a sigh. She took another hit of the joint and slouched further against the back of the couch. “That _mess_.”

“Certainly wasn’t pleasant to read about,” he commented. “You came out fairly unscathed with just a few nip slip pics to worry about.”

So he _did_ see them. When she texted him on the boat that she had spotted a paparazzi while they were out there, he responded after twenty minutes that keeping her privacy wasn’t under his jurisdiction anymore. She asked him how he was doing and he took eight minutes to reply that he was fine. He had moved from being angry to just not caring by that point.

“What did you see?” she asked hesitantly.

David stubbed out the joint in a small cup on the coffee table and spread his legs slightly to take up more space on the couch. Everything seemed to be symbolic to how they really were. She felt cold and uncomfortable while teetering on the edge. He was the counterpoint to that with an overwhelming presence that excited and frustrated her.

“I saw _enough_ ,” he replied. “Was he digging for gold in there or does that kind of awkward touching turn you on now?”

“Okay…”

“And that dress…” he shook his head. “Did you wear the bracelet I got you and the dress I fucked you in all over my apartment in New York on purpose? Or does he not like to have anything original including the stories he writes?”

She rolled her eyes and stood up to stand in front of him. “I don’t want to hang out here if you’re going to make fun of him.”

“Why not?” David asked. “I’m sure he has some _lovely_ things to say about me.”

It was true. After Peter caught the video of the Webby’s, there was a long diatribe of snobbery that outdid all the other ways he acted elitist and stuck up. It came down to his insecurity over how happy she appeared around David. It was blatant but she never thought she would hear him call another man names.

David reached up and put his hand on her stomach to imitate the way Peter had touched her by the pool. “Was he impressed with your waistline because it was the first time he had seen it?”

She pushed his hand down and he used both of his large palms to grab her hips. “Don’t.”

“Why not?” he asked as he gripped her harder and his fingers dug in.

She crossed her arms under her breasts. “You’re mad at me.”

“Not mad,” he corrected. “Mad would mean I still care. I _don’t_.”

“That’s worse,” she countered. “I don’t want you to not care.”

“I can’t really care about something I’m not wanted or appreciated by,” he retorted.

“I appreciate you,” she whispered sadly. Maybe she didn’t show it recently and she probably didn’t deserve his care but deep down she did care for him. She always would. “I want us to be… friends again.”

He pulled her down on the couch next to him and suddenly she was on her back underneath his body. “I told you we’ll always be friends.”

There was a laden desire in his tone. Under the smell of the cannabis, she found the familiarity of his body with his aftershave and his own scent. It smelled like a place she wanted to call home and she hadn’t realized she was feeling homesick until that wafted into her olfactory senses.

“This isn’t what friends do,” she reminded him but she adjusted herself under his body anyway.

“You said that in January,” he reminded her as he pushed against her a little.

“Did I?” she asked.

They had eaten some edible chocolates and had a long afternoon together while making promises they didn’t keep. Correction, she didn’t keep. He was more than willing that day to announce to the world and face the repercussions of a public relationship together.

“Look where it got us,” he mumbled.

“Did you say that before?” she asked honestly.

He wasn’t flaccid but he wasn’t all the way there to a full erection. So close after he came, he would probably ready to go again but that shouldn’t be her concern.

“Maybe…” he thought as he looked down at her body beneath his.

She tried to find his eyes but he wouldn’t look at her like she needed him to. More than anything, she wanted to look into his eyes and see that he forgave her, not that she deserved it. He wasn’t going to give that to her and she couldn’t give in to him now.

“I can’t do this with you if you hate me.”

She might continually repeat her old patterns with different people but she was at least able to stop letting David into her bed when he hated her. It was a very awkward time when he did so publicly and on set treated her like she was someone he felt utter disdain towards. It was a complete contrast to how he was in private moments when he kissed her with the love and affection of someone who needed her and her only.

What was happening between them didn’t feel exactly like that but it was close.

He sighed and pushed himself up from the couch. He slouched back and adjusted himself under his suit pants without looking at her. “You should go.”

She blinked back a few tears as she sat up and pulled his hand into her lap. “Can you look at me?”

“Why?” he asked as he stared at the cigarette on the table she had dropped.

“It hurts my feelings when you don’t,” she admitted quietly.

"Your feelings," he scoffed. He pulled his hand from her grasp as he stood up and looked down at her. “Then you should have followed through on a promise we made to each other instead of taking some weird easy way out.”

He left her in the trailer to walk off his frustration and regroup before they were needed back on set. She looked down at her hands to see them shaking. This wasn’t how they were supposed to work together. This felt too reminiscent of when she started dating Rodney after he got married.

It was such a complicated scenario between them in 1997. The man wanted her all to himself even when he belonged to someone else. It ruined what could have been a good thing for her and made work something completely unbearable. But this time he wasn’t married or getting divorced. He was solitary and possessive while she was supposed to be off-limits.

If anyone looked closely at their actual history over the last twenty-five years, she was never really off-limits to David and vice versa. They tried and failed repeatedly. This time she had vowed to be good, to not make a cuckold of her boyfriend and it was making everyone miserable.

She supposed by now she had to consider Peter her boyfriend but it was such an awkward phrase for someone her age. They weren’t exactly partners and they weren’t casual enough to see other people. Her situation with Peter was less clear than it had been with David but she didn’t understand why she was still stuck in the murky waters with what could probably be the wrong man.

It was sitting alone in David’s trailer that she realized that was the first time she had thought Peter was wrong for her.

  
***** *** *****

  
His mouth pressed against hers and she opened her lips on instinct. His fingers thread through the hair at the base of her neck and he curled them slightly to grip her hair in the way she liked. Excitement shot through her body and she couldn’t help when a little whimper escaped her throat.

It wasn’t supposed to be as sexual as they were making it but some things couldn’t be helped.

David used his other free hand to slide across her waist and pull her flush to his body. It was a full body kiss that felt like the precursor to seriously hot sex. Another few beats and he pulled back to look at her.

“We’ll get him out of there,” he promised her as Mulder.

She nodded sadly with tears in her eyes as a woman who was on the brink of losing everything again. At least this script made sense and she didn’t have to repeat ‘alien DNA’ every twenty lines.

“I have hope, Mulder,” she said with an almost sob.

“Cut!” James called from behind the monitor.

David dropped his hands and cleared his throat as he sat down on the edge of Mulder’s desk in the ordinary house.

“That was brilliant,” James assured them. “I think we got it.”

“You think that it’s better that we shot it here?” David asked as he glanced around the set of the house.

He asked questions like this to ensure he was involved in aspects of the show. David was better at maintaining interest in this kind of project whereas she found the mythology and long purple prose that Chris liked to write too convoluted to follow. If she was going to do something that felt overly complicated, she would rather it be a play instead of something about aliens.

Yet, here she was.

The money wasn’t bad and a call from her manager reminding her that the A-list projects weren’t going to bang down her door unless she did good work when she was working.

Admittedly, the last season on the X-Files wasn’t her best performance. When she watched the premiere episode in the crowded theatre in Los Angeles, she felt the embarrassment wash over her that her half-assed effort was evident. They wanted her to earn the money they were paying her as opposed to last year’s effort on the set. She could and would have to accept that direction.

This time around, she had watched a few episodes prior to the first week of table reads and costume fittings. She rehearsed some of the old monologues and came prepared to do a job as a professional. There is nothing professional about an actress that can’t act.

Instead of proving that she was more than just Dana Scully to his Fox Mulder, she solidified to some very critical people that she was barely a one-trick pony who faked an accent to fit in with a culture that barely accepted her. She had hoped to distance herself from the role that started her career but instead she showed she couldn’t do the one part she felt was beneath her. The Brits liked her in the theatre but they didn’t appreciate her accent. They loved her when the royal family approved of her but wouldn’t allow her to forget she was American.

She didn’t feel much like either lately.

“Gillian?” David prompted and she realized he and James had been speaking to her.

“Sorry,” she said quickly. “You need another one?”

“No,” James said slowly and glanced over to David. “I was going to say we could do the last scene of this episode now since we’re ahead of schedule.”

Gillian looked at her watch and recognized that it was set to Scully’s time and not actual time. James’ set always had a much better attention to detail and she could appreciate that.

“What time is it?” she asked.

A PA behind the monitor took out his cell phone. “It’s a quarter past six.”

“Okay,” she agreed.

They would need at least an hour to set up and it would take another three to five hours to shoot the last scene which meant she would be getting home after midnight. In London it would be the early morning hours. A thought occurred to her that it might seem obvious she was trying to avoid talking to Peter.

She probably was.

Long distance seemed to work well for her when she had a hectic schedule and needed to compartmentalize every hour and moment of her life. His personality wanted slight control over that instead of respect for when she needed distance. He encouraged her to come to events of his but rarely came to hers. He had asked her to visit Vienna while he prepared for another season of The Crown but wouldn’t fly to Vancouver for the duration of the filming of the show.

“ _I trust you_ ,” he told her as he gave her a patronizing kiss on the tip of her nose.

At least one of them trusted her. She was barely maintaining any semblance of control over herself. She had to avoid being alone with David when she could to ensure that she didn’t violate that trust as she had in New York City in May.

A PA approached Gillian with new sides and the young woman followed her back to her trailer to wait for the current costume. She wondered if the smell of the cannabis they smoked still lingered on her clothing.

“Can I have something to eat?” she asked as she took the wardrobe from the young woman. “A salad or something?”

The PA nodded. “We have Greek salad they just put out at craft service. You want any meat?”

“Chicken, if they have it,” she said weakly and closed her trailer door to change into her robe. She could eat in her robe, change and finish the day off while avoiding being called difficult or spoiled.

The script for the scene they were shooting was sort of in her brain so she pulled the pages out to scan them again. She hoped someone had rearranged her ride back to her house tonight since they would probably run long today, but at least she had twelve hours before she needed to be back here tomorrow morning.

The lines were in her mind and she tried to picture herself saying them to David. Makeup would touch up her lips after she ate and make sure her costume looked right.

During the filming of the show, the attention to every detail could be overwhelming but it was part of the work she enjoyed. She would still push to get a scene right even if it meant doing something she had wanted to avoid.

She took off her suit jacket and pulled her blouse from her trousers. The costume department would be sending over another well-tailored suit. She stepped out of her Jimmy Choos and hung her trousers on the hanger with the rest of her costume. As she tied her thick robe around her waist, she slipped her stocking feet into a pair of UGG boots that felt like heaven after hours in sharp heels.

As she sat down on the couch with the hope of a short sleep, she nestled into the warm cushions and closed her eyes. After a few breaths and the fleeting thought she could take a nap instead of study, a knock alerted her to her dinner’s arrival. She called out to come in and the door opened to bring the smell of freshly cooked spiced chicken to fill the space.

“ _Delivery_ ,” a voice called.

She opened her eyes to see David standing with food for two in hand. He set the food on the small table near her with a friendly grin.

“Chicken for your thoughts?” he offered.

She sat up and looked at him with hopeful anticipation. “What about Tom?”

David looked at her with confusion as he sat down on the edge of the couch. “Who?”

“Tom the turkey,” she reminded him and she stifled a yawn. “Elsie’s friend.”

His mouth crooked up in a smile and she could see he was impressed she recalled a character from his first book. “Tom might understand there are starving actresses that can’t function without the good fats his brethren supply.”

She reached to the reusable plastic container they put her food in and opened the lid with happy anticipation. “Smells like lemon pepper.”

“Should go well with your Greek salad,” he commented.

“What did you get?” she asked as she looked at the other container.

He opened the lid and the smell of cumin and chili spice wafted out. “Black beans, rice, veggies on lettuce.”

“No meat?” she asked.

She wondered if he was able to maintain his taut physique on a strictly vegetarian diet. The man was pure muscle these days but he was lean in all the ways that pleased her to look at him naked. He still had an overbearing size compared to her and she felt safe around him. It was a comfortable and familiar feeling that she only had when they were together.

“I ate it on the way over,” he admitted. “Where are your forks?”

She pushed herself off the couch and retrieved one for each of them. As she sat respectively apart from him in front of their food, she commented, “Yours looks better than mine.”

“I’m not sharing,” he deadpanned but she hoped he might anyway.

She stabbed the vegetables with her fork and sighed dramatically before taking a bite. The red wine vinaigrette was tart and her jaw clenched immediately. She licked the dressing off her lips before taking another bite.

“Don’t _do_ that,” he scolded her and she turned to look at him quickly. “Don’t eat like that.”

“I can’t eat now?” she scoffed.

“You should eat,” he assured her. “Just stop- stop licking your _god damned_ lips.”

He stood up and walked over to the small kitchen table in her trailer. “I think a table and chairs is a safer space to share food. Come on.”

She took her things and joined him at the table to sit across from him cautiously. He had made his indifference to her painfully clear over the last three weeks and the months leading up to filming. Nothing she did had gotten a reaction from him on any level.

Then it dawned on her what she walked in on him doing earlier that day and she felt truly idiotic.

“Was that because of us earlier?” she asked as she gestured with her hand.

His cheeks pinked and she knew it was.

“ _Oh_ ,” she clenched her chin.

“Don’t take it personally,” he quipped with a scowl of his eyebrows and took a healthy bite of his food.

The mixed signals weren’t helping her. She might resign herself to their frustrated state while she avoided her personal life. If he was going to avoid her in the downtime, make nice with everyone on the set but her and spend his days proving himself the better person then she could accept that. This guy across from her seemed more open than the closed-off guy she recognized from a 1997 movie set while they filmed the first movie.

She didn’t know what he had to be so angry about that time. He got married while she was losing it all.

Her guard was still up as much as she wanted it not to be. He would pretend to want her without looking at her, say something glib and dismiss her as though she wasn’t anything other than a secondary species not deserving of any consideration.

“I _do_ eat,” she muttered and took a bite of her salad.

“You’re back on that high protein, low starch crap again,” he noted. They ate on the set between takes that afternoon so he watched as she ate tuna carefully with a fork and avoided all bread and crackers surrounding the presentation on her plate. “It’s fine but I think you’re hungry.”

“The camera adds-”

“Shut the fuck up,” he cut her off. “Which one of us was in tight red underpants and shirtless last time?”

“Oh you _finally_ had to be exposed the way I had been,” she scoffed.

David gave her a nudge and there was a slight break in the tension. “I had to dance. No one ever asked you to dance.”

“Thank god,” she sighed. “At least most of that was cut and no one saw your penis.”

“I think in that angle Darin got, they saw basically all of my penis shape,” he replied. “Did someone see your bush and I missed that episode?”

“No, in the first movie,” she reminded him. “I was in that band thing in the pod covered in slime and I was topless when you ‘saved’ me.”

Actors did this where they discussed the characters in interviews as a third person but when accounting for events of a character’s life, it was a first person point of view. When she and David discussed the old episodes, it was ‘did we get married’ not ‘did Mulder and Scully tie the knot?’ as a way of connecting themselves to the characters.

“The crew never saw your boobs,” he assured her. “I kept them close.”

She sighed. “I was in my underwear in the first episode.”

“ _Arlene_ was in her underwear longer,” he countered. “We were stripped down a lot for two people who never had sex with each other on screen.”

Gillian took a bite of her chicken. “Sure, this isn’t Showtime.”

“Mulder would have actually performed cunnilingus on Scully if this was Showtime-” he started and she cheered. “But people _definitely_ would have seen your tits.”

Gillian made a face as she chewed. “Is that what kept me off that show?”

David looked at her earnestly. “No. Your agent turned it down.”

She stopped chewing. “ _What_?”

He looked at her quizzically. “Yeah. We had an idea for a character for you but your agent said you wouldn’t do the time in L.A. away from the kids. You didn’t know that?”

She shook her head slowly. “I always thought you just didn’t want me encroaching on your anti-Mulder show.”

David sighed. “I think if you had played Karen, it would have seemed like you and I don’t know how to act without each other and we both know that’s not true.”

“Not if you listen to my bad press,” she muttered.

“I read about your sexy holiday with my name under the headline,” he pointed out with that tone she recognized as less than impressed. “I got a google alert about it. What bad press are you getting?”

“It's... It's fine. I’m sorry what happened in Italy came back to you,” she said earnestly.

At the time she wasn’t thinking about him. Admittedly, she wasn’t thinking about much else until Peter said he wouldn’t prevent the photos from coming out.

_“If you want to hide this any longer that’s going to come out of your pocketbook,” he said with a disinterested tone. “It doesn’t do anything for my life if we’re snapped on the street.”_

Peter didn’t care if his kids saw him with another woman but men never care about those things. Unless it could end his marriage, which was over as far as he had reported, then he wouldn’t care. He wasn’t about to do a full spread in OK! reporting on their new love but he wasn’t paying anyone off to keep this a secret.

He was exactly the opposite of David in more ways than one. She thought that’s what she wanted. He wasn’t concerned about the people he wrote about as people but as symbols. He spoke on behalf of the royal family and how they felt without concern how his show would make them feel.

“You keep escaping into your head,” he asked and took a bite. As he chewed quickly, he reached into his suit jacket and produced two small wrapped brownies that she recognized. She knew that he could order ten for just over $200 and they were the best twenty-dollar brownie she had ever had. “I was going to say we should share these for dessert.”

A slow smile crept up on her lips. “Really?”

“Yeah but you’re not really with it today,” he said as he put them back in his pocket. “You should just take yours home with you when we’re done.”

Her face fell. “I’m with it.”

He took the last bite and stood up. “Nah. You’re all over the map.”

“I’m not.” she argued as she stood up as well.

He tossed his fork in the sink and took his container with him so the craft service team could wash it. They were going to be the most ‘green’ production this year if it killed them.

“You’re too busy thinking about that pompous jack-ass,” he countered and she couldn’t argue with that because it was true. “You better be ready to work when we get to set. I have someplace to be tonight.”

Her jaw dropped a little and she felt the pangs of knowing the only kind of place he would go that late would be for actual sex. “Maybe you could stop coming in here to mess with my head.”

He stood in her doorway and looked at her with an expression that was full of disdain. “I came in here to try to be your friend but you don’t seem to be able to recognize how much you fucked it up between us. I’ll stop trying.”

She crossed the space to follow him out the door. “Hey!”

When she caught up to him outside his trailer, he was pulling a cigarette from his pocket. She pulled the smoke from his hands and threw it on the ground.

“What the fuck?” His lips were still pursed to put the cigarette in his mouth and his hands were ready to light it.

“Don’t do that,” she said. “Don’t act like this is me not trying. I’m trying.”

“Were you trying to make me hard with those noises or do you like messing with my head?” he snapped. “Those weren’t acting noises you were making and don’t lie to me about it because I know the fucking difference.”

She clenched her chin and took a long breath. “I wasn’t-”

“Gillian for fuck’s sake be honest,” he cut her off.

“I would if you would let me try!” she shouted.

“You should have actually tried in _January_. You’re a fucking quitter!” he shouted back and walked inside his trailer to slam the door on her face.

She stood in the lot with a PA twenty feet away holding their costumes and a makeup crew waiting to do touchups.

“ _Fuck_ ,” she cursed and stormed into her trailer to slam the door also. She looked around the space that they had just shared and smelled his lingering cologne in the air. “Fuck!”

 


	2. Tease

If he wouldn’t look at her when they called cut and he was going to play these petty games, she could play them too. This wasn’t the first time they couldn’t stand each other. He caused a ruckus after their late dinner when he called out what she did to him. She wounded him with her actions before David shut her out.

It wasn’t fair to pin it all on her. He had his hand in all of this falling apart but he wouldn’t own up to it.

The tension between them was palpable and not in the ways that used to make for great chemistry on a television screen. This was anger, frustration, hurt and pain over the last two and a half decades with some respites of goodness mixed in.

James reassured her several times what they were shooting was working for them. He spoke to David and Gillian together before they began to shoot the scene and then separately after the first take.

“Is this any good, what we’re doing?” Gillian asked quietly as David watched the shot on the monitor.

“This is _great_!” James reassured her. “Can’t you feel it?”

“I don’t know anymore,” she admitted and he gave her arm a squeeze before telling them both he wanted another take of the same lines they just ran.

No one would say it on set but David was being an utter prick to her. She started this season with the desire to want to make it better. She needed to find a way to get absolution from his judgement but when it came down to it, he wasn’t a man to judge her. He made mistakes. He left her behind. He hurt her and others. She wasn’t the only person who was ever wrong -

She stopped herself on that train of thought because it wasn’t helpful or useful. It was sidestepping her part in it. She had to recognize that she had a pattern.

Truth be told, it was the anger inside of her that wanted to blame David for her behaviour. She wanted to continue to find faults in others instead of looking at herself. That was the childish and petulant side that demanded him to bend to her will when he could only offer himself as he was. He had grown up and changed so much in the last twenty years and yet she still acted as though it wasn’t good enough.

He was more than good enough - lately he seemed to be superior to her. Perhaps after all they had been through, his position should have been one of equal footing.

Her driver pulled up to her Vancouver property and she grabbed her two oversized bags to exit the vehicle. He parked the car at her front porch and opened her car door for her.

“Thanks, Ben.”

Ben gave her a polite smile and waited in the Town Car until she entered the house. As she turned on the lights in the front hall, she heard the sound of the engine accelerating down the driveway.

Gillian set her bags down, stepped out of her flip flops and tucked her feet inside the lambskin slippers. The house was quiet and she felt the solitude that she normally craved wrap around her like a blanket then strangle her with the quiet.

“Honey, I’m home,” she called to no one. “Oh right, I’m _alone_.”

There was a quiet moment where she congratulated herself on her own wit and then sighed that she was always made the straight man in comedies instead of the goofball or the silly one. She could be funny, or _she_ thought she was funny.

Gillian made a face. Being alone these days in London was few and far between. It was a respite to come to Vancouver from the schedule she lived overseas. Lunch dates, book tours, meetings with directors for future projects and yet nothing seemed to go anywhere. More bit parts in movies she couldn’t tell if they would be successful or not.

She always thought maybe the next one might have a chance but then when edited together, it looked nothing like what she pictured. Unless the project was Dickens, a play or another classic story in a miniseries and those always turned out exactly how she pictured it.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket and she pulled out the small device to see a U.K. number flashing across the screen.

Eventually, she would have to talk to him.

“Hello?” she answered with her American accent still on her tongue.

“Hello, Gillian,” a voice answered tersely.

“Hello Peter,” she replied as her accent switched into the hoarse British aristocratic lilt he preferred. “How are you?”

“You didn’t text me back,” he began.

“It’s been a long day,” she rationalized as she took her bags from the front hallway into the kitchen.

She set the leather duffles on the counter and looked around the space where David had come to her to plead for them to continue as status quo or at least have some continuation of what they had. He was still hoping she wouldn’t leave him at that point and she was still hoping to change her mind about all the things that had been piling up for her.

“Darling?” he prompted.

“Sorry?” she questioned.

“I appreciate your apology, Darling,” he sighed and she could hear the wheels on his writing chair squeak under him.

She could picture him in his study at a desk as he worked on the next season of his award-winning show with a cup of tea and biscuits. He was so British sometimes it was predictable she could guess his habits and his likes and dislikes.

She didn’t mean it as an apology but she ignored it. “You were up early.”

She was referring to the middle of the night text he sent her asking to talk.

“You know I sleep poorly when I’m writing,” he reminded her patronizingly.

That much was true. He tossed and turned, kept a laptop on his nightstand and wrote at odd hours. It was disruptive and she felt less important to him while he went through this process. She couldn’t imagine how his wife handled it while raising five children.

“Yes,” she agreed with a long breath. “I’m sorry, but it’s quite late for me here and I’ve had an emotional day.”

“Why’s that?” he asked sounding genuinely curious.

“We filmed an important scene-”

Peter scoffed.

His opinion of her work on this show was quite clear when he offered her a bit part on Season 3 of the Crown so she could bow out early or cancel her obligations in Vancouver. Of course, it would open her to legal issues and lose a large chunk of the loyal fans who had been with her since the beginning. Her feelings towards them were more complicated. She loved and loathed them at the same time, however, no one that wasn’t in the thick of it with her was allowed to speak disparagingly about them. When David did it, she knew he understood how great and fantastic it was that people tuned in for nine years to watch their silly sci-fi program. When Peter did it, he was an outsider who never cared much for the science fiction genre without appreciating the other projects it allowed her to do. She had the means to do theatre for little to no money, set up a nice life for her and her children and fame gave her a chance to shine a light on charities due to a light on her all from her ‘silly science fiction program.’

The more he said that, the more she was sure he had never seen the show.

She poured water in the kettle and set it to boil. Tea would be good. “It was a long day with David-”

“Was it,” he cut her off but didn’t ask.

She sighed and continued to try to explain herself. “And I’m just worn out.”

“Well Darling, I miss you terribly. I have some pages I needed read aloud and you do all the parts so wonderfully,” he said with a sigh.

This would be a wonderful compliment if he used her on the show but he didn’t hire her to do the parts. She was just his muse.

“You could send them to me and I could read them for you via Skype if you want,” she offered but didn’t totally mean it.

“You’re a gem. Text me your schedule when you have a sec,” he said suddenly full of happiness and optimism. “I’ll ring tomorrow! Love.”

The line went dead and she felt more drained than she was before.

She tried to think of how she got here in her life. The kettle announced it had boiled the water, she pulled a mug down from the cupboard and smiled at the one she pulled out.

**_“I don’t want to wait anymore I’m tired of looking for answers,_ **  
**_Take me some place where the music’s dead and there’s laughter”_ **

Lyrics from My Silver Lining were printed on the side of the mug from a band that couldn’t possibly know their story. However, it was almost exactly them.

He had shyly presented her with the mug, a Mumford and Sons tote bag, a small heart pendant and concert tickets wrapped up together in a thoughtful package. It was probably the least amount of money he had ever spent on her for a gift but it held some of the most sentimental meaning. They were going to go to the Squamish music festival together, rumours be damned, and enjoy a day of fun like two normal people who deserved it.

Until an Aquarius event was moved up, he had to fly to LA. out of a contractual obligation and more of their future was spoiled. They couldn’t get their timing right even then.

As she watched her jasmine tea steep into the hot water, she thought about how her patterns hadn’t changed at all.

It always started from a happy place. This was the impulsive, reckless side of her that married Clyde after only a few months of dating, had a baby right away then wondered why FOX wanted her canned. It began as joy but eventually became a source of only stress and regret for her, as things often did. Not because of Piper but because it took her a divorce for her to appreciate the good things about her husband again.

Heartache with Clyde wasn’t the first time she would appreciate the good in someone once there were only goodbyes. She felt a pang in her heart that there would actually be an ‘end’ with David.

It was one of the reasons she was apprehensive about becoming serious with him because she worried it would end one day. With her track record, how could she expect any different? That ending would mean the loss of a friend who had been a constant in her life since her early twenties.

In the beginning with him, she repeatedly let her guard down at the worst possible moments. Just off the top of her head, she could think of during their auditions and over the course of the series in Vancouver that proved to be bad timing for them. When they both belonged to other people and moved down to Los Angeles to find moments of privacy were fewer and far between, they still couldn’t keep themselves from falling back into bed.

If she was going to be honest, it was the worst side of their affair. Admitting to anyone how long they had been screwing up their personal lives with each other when they shouldn’t be would be personal suicide.

This was the side of her that tried to avoid discussing how she ended up with Mark while she was still married to Julian. She made a lot of wrong turns in her life that she eventually was able to own as a way of growing slowly as a human being but in the end, she found herself stuck between two men.

“Not two men,” she said out loud. “One of them doesn’t want anything to do with you anymore.”

Talking out loud to herself would seem far less ridiculous if Nelson had joined her on this trip like she wanted. He didn’t fare so well on planes these days and often pooped in the front hallway when he was frustrated at her. They had a complicated relationship too.

Maybe she would bring him anyway after her next weekend back to London. She had a four-day weekend coming up and without Piper here in her off-hours, the house seemed too quiet.

Piper had gotten another spot to work in the art department but her hours didn’t coincide with Gillian’s. She went out with friends, kept herself busy and spent nights with her dad more than last time. On one hand, she was happy she raised someone to be so independent but on the other, she wanted to feel needed just a little.

Gillian turned on her playlist and the sound of My Morning Jacket filled the small space in her house. The Bluetooth speakers beeped their awareness to her phone being nearby and the lyrics of a song that used to mean a lot began to overtake the silence that let too much happen in her own mind.

She pulled out her phone and looked at the song that was playing.

_**“Tell me I’m wrong, tell me I’m right,** _  
_**Tell me there’s nobody else in the world** _  
_**Tell me I’m wrong** _  
_**Tell me I’m right** _  
_**Tell me there’s nobody else in the world”** _

She hit next on the screen and another song that reminded her of David came on. Songs about love, friendship, heartache, anger, sex and pain all reminded her of him. It should be Peter on her mind but it wasn’t.

It was getting ridiculous. The tea she was drinking wasn’t soothing her nerves and she felt punchy like she was going to lash out.

If she was going to lash out at anyone, it should be the man who was making her feel so impotent and helpless.

Helpless wasn’t a good word to think of because it just threw her back to The Cutting Room where they sang off key like two idiots in love because they were both of those things.

He wasn’t innocent in all of this no matter what everyone thought. They saw his kind, mature and humble ways. No one would remember the nastiness that lurked deep inside him and she endured for fifteen years. It was only in the last ten years that he truly changed into the man she always knew he could be.

Her phone buzzed twice and she looked at the screen to see David’s number flash across. Before she could answer it, the call disconnected and she wondered if he was calling her due to some osmosis while she thought of him.

Only he was ‘supposed to be out with someone’ tonight and she wondered if he was calling her to make fun of her.

She shook her head at the thought. That kind of meanness wasn’t really inside of him anymore but he was pretty angry with her. He told her he didn’t care but something inside of him snapped and refused to engage with her unless the cameras were rolling.

She turned off the lights downstairs, poured herself a glass of water and slowly walked upstairs past the beetles in shadow boxes before going upstairs for a bath.

“Hi Lloyd,” Gillian said to the giant scarab beetle.

She thought back to when David teased her that everything in her house had to have a name. This was before he made love to her all night and they still had hopes in their hearts that this would all work out for them. She wanted him out of her bed, her mind and her heart at the time but she couldn’t shake him. If she was thinking of him like a drug, she was almost four months sober and she was itching to relapse just so he could help her forget about the things she didn’t want to face in London.

He told her that he didn’t know how to be her friend and not want her. He promised he would always want to be a presence in her life. Now, she was certain he wanted her body but in regards to her friendship, he could take it or leave it. It felt like the late 90s all over again.  
  
She left her phone to charge in the bedroom on silent while the tub filled with Epsom salts and lavender beads to help her relax. She was wound tightly. When she felt this tense before, she usually liked a cigarette or a drink, however the latter wasn’t an option for her anymore.

She shed her clothing and put everything in a bag to be sent out for laundry service. As she tied her robe around her frame, she remembered the cigarette she pilfered from David’s trailer and went in search for her handbag.

The music was still playing through a portable Bluetooth speaker in the kitchen and she picked it up as she went in search for a smoke. She could have a cigarette, drink her tea and sleep tonight knowing she at least tried to talk to him.

Inside her handbag as she searched for the tin she stashed her lone cigarette away in, she found the bracelet and rings he purchased for her.

 _“One ring for every time I should have committed to you in the past,”_ he promised her.

This was after his lacklustre apology last year for failing to get involved in a fight between her and someone who worked for him. She stood in a Los Angeles hotel room as an assistant scolded her for something Gillian had said off the cuff to another person. David sat there and refused to stop the argument. In her life, it had been too long since anyone spoke to her with such anger, condescension and spite as though the last two and a half decades of a friendship meant nothing.

All David had to do at the time was stand up and stop the fight but instead, he sat back to watch it unravel. When she looked at him later, he shrugged and told her that it was a lesson on what to say and to whom.

Maybe that was the straw that broke the camel’s back but it didn’t stop them from continuing their relationship. Instead of forgiving small faults in each other, they began to keep score. They did what they swore they would never do in the ways in which they treated one another and their actions tore them apart. By August, they were at the most strange and awful place in their history and that was saying a lot.

They went to Chicago for a convention that he had convinced her was a good idea and then proceeded to behave distant and aloof. That was a mess of sex and awkward moments.

Before Christmas, it was over.

The small tin was found at the bottom of her bag and she searched the kitchen drawers for a lighter or matchbook.

“For fuck’s sakes,” she cursed as the cigarette dangled between her lips. “How the _fuck_ don’t I have a fucking lighter?”

Mentally she added another quarter to the swear jar on the counter and said a silent apology to her children for cursing. They found her crass language embarrassing versus cool like she assumed it would be. She opened the next drawer that had pens and paper inside and found one in there.

“Eu- _fucking_ -reka,” she muttered and lit the cigarette to take a satisfying drag from it.

It occurred to her that the tub was still running upstairs and she took the found jewellery and cigarette up the stairs to finish contemplating how it all went wrong before attempting to sleep.

As she reached the top of the stairs, she heard her phone buzzing on the nightstand. She quickly turned off the speaker in hand and without looking at her caller ID, she pressed the green button on the screen.

“Hello?”

“Where are you?” his voice asked lazily.

He sounded drunk but he rarely drank to be inebriated anymore. “David?”

“That’s what the caller ID says, doesn’t it?” he asked with a laugh.

She looked at the top of her screen. It actually said a local Vancouver number. “No, it’s a 778 area code.”

He shuffled for a moment and she heard him curse. “I’m not on my phone.”

“I’ve gathered that much,” she replied tersely. She unplugged her phone from the charger and walked into the bathroom to turn the water off on the tub. “Where are you?”

“I asked you first,” he said with a laugh.

“I’m at home,” she replied as she looked at the tub. She took another drag from the cigarette before stubbing it out against the side of the sink. What a waste. “I was going to have a bath.”

“Want some company?” he offered and she believed he was serious.

The part in her belly that longed for his company tightened and she felt the familiar tingles of anticipation. “ _No_.”

“Why not?” he whined.

Gillian rolled her eyes. Whining from a grown man was worse than listening to a whining child. 

“Where are you?” she asked.

“I’m at your gate,” he said and sniffed a little. She heard a buzz and the sound of footsteps around him. “Now I’m at your door. Let me in.”

She felt anger and frustration surge through her. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“I came to wash your back,” he teased. “Let me in. I’ll start singing outside your door if you don’t.”

“Go home,” she told him tiredly.

“ _Helpless! Helpless! Helpless!_ ” he sang loudly.

It was off-key and slurred which was just the kind of singing that got the paparazzi in the neighbourhood.

“Stop!” she cried into the phone.

“Let me in,” he urged.

“Fuck, _hold on_ ,” she sighed.

"Yipee," he said lightly and she tried not to find that funny.

Gillian adjusted her robe and set her phone back on the nightstand. Quickly, she made her way down the stairs to her front door where she saw the outline of his frame in the frosted glass at the entrance. She took a steadying breath and opened the door to him. “You’re _drunk_.”

“ _Hello_ to you too,” he quipped as he stumbled inside.

She closed the door behind him and rubbed her temples. This wasn’t what she wanted after today.

“I’m not _drunk_ ,” he corrected her. “I’ve just had four tequila shots before being driven here by a really nice Uber person.”

“You took an Uber to my house?” she repeated as she thought about how quickly that could get out in the press.

“No!” he said quickly. “I took an Uber to this neighbourhood. I told them I was renting a house and couldn’t remember the address.”

This was the kind of reckless behaviour that nearly got them caught when they weren’t supposed to be together in the past. She was almost so blatantly with someone else that his presence in her home at this time of night couldn’t be misconstrued as anything else but what it was.

“Did you come here to apologize?” she asked him as she crossed her arms under her breasts.

He took a step towards her and she stepped back. They repeated this until her back was against the door and he was leaning over her.

“Apologize?” he repeated as his hands went to the sash on her robe. “Where’s _my_ apology?”

She pushed his hands away and he put them on her hips. She was angry he was trying to touch her but even more so that she wanted his hands on her to a more aggressive degree. She wanted to feel him all over her body and inside her. She wanted to taste the liquor on his tongue to soothe the cravings she had for a fix of the addiction she had sworn off.

“I’m sorry,” he said lamely.

She pushed on his chest and moved past him in the foyer. He caught her wrist quickly and they stood for a beat as they stared at one another. David tugged on her gently for her to step towards him and he pulled her into an embrace.

“Let me apologize for being an asshole,” he bartered as he rubbed his hands up her back.

She breathed in his cologne and sweat through his shirt. “Which time?”

He scoffed. “When does the statute of limitations run out on being a prick in my thirties?”

“I’m not talking about then,” she replied as his hands dropped to his sides. She took a slight step away. “I’m talking about January 2016. I’m talking about-”

“Gillian,” he cut her off. “You _gotta_ let go of that shit.”

Her eyes widened and she shook her head. “You have to be joking.”

“Someone hurt your feelings because they called you out on something you shouldn’t have said and you’re pissed at me about it?” he asked with the incredulity of a man who should be more careful with his words. “That’s some really fucked up logic you have there.”

“You can call your Uber back with that phone that isn’t yours and get the hell out, you know,” she reminded him as she reached for the door. He pushed her arm down and she could feel herself wanting to lunge at him. “Don’t manhandle me. I don’t find it cute or sexy anymore.”

David grinned as she threw back his own statement from earlier to him. He wrapped his strong hands around her biceps and grinned at her knowingly. “That’s a lie.”

She struggled in his grasp. “Fuck off.”

“I’m trying,” he commented glibly.

“This isn’t funny to me!” she yelled. “You hurt my fucking feelings, you asshole.”

“ _I’m_ an asshole? _I’m_ the asshole?” he repeated the statement with indignance and she nodded in his grasp. He scoffed as he pushed her against the door. “You’re an asshole too.”

“I’m not,” she denied but she was lying and she knew it.

She wasn’t acting like the greatest version of herself these days but she wouldn’t admit that to him. Not right now and certainly not with the way they were talking with one another. Dishonesty would have to prevail at the moment.

He lowered his mouth to hers and she could practically taste him on her tongue. She hated how her body was reacting to him. She never felt this excitement in almost a year of being with Peter. David was engulfing and soul-swallowing passion mixed with laughter and love. He was excitement and overbearing waves of emotion that she couldn’t control.

She preferred to be the hurricane and not the small city wrecked by a storm.

His lips brushed against hers and she felt a small noise escape the back of her throat. He pulled back abruptly and stood up.

“I smell smoke,” he said.

“What?” She was confused.

“From your _liar, liar pants on fire_ , Gillian Leigh Anderson!” he declared and stepped away folding his arms across his chest. “You still want me!”

This time she didn’t hold back and she did lunge at him. She pushed two hands on his chest and shoved with the entirety of her might.

“Oh!” David stumbled back and landed on the bottom stair, squarely on his ass. “Fuck!”

“Are you okay?” she asked and covered her mouth to stifle a laugh.

David pointed a long finger at her. “That’s abuse. I’m not going to call the cops because no one would believe that the skeleton of Gillian Anderson could actually expel that much force.”

“Fuck _off_ about my weight,” she cursed at him. “I’ve been stressed.”

“Why don’t you stress eat like other women?” he asked as he stood up and rubbed his ass. “Seriously, asking as a friend. Are you okay?”

All actresses had a weight they got down to for any role that was five to ten pounds lighter than their weight before they got a job. When they auditioned, it looked better to be healthier and vibrant with a glow about them. As they began filming, that glow only made them look pudgy and wide even though none of these women were any of the sort. She wondered how science could give her access to all the information in the world but not change how a camera perceived the human body to seem larger than it was.

She rolled her eyes. “I’m fine. Is anything bruised or broken?”

“When Dana Scully used to say she was fine-”

“David I _swear_ to God,” she cut him off. A thought occurred to her. “Wait did you watch the show before we started filming?”

“I made some notes of episodes I liked,” he said with a smug smile. “Only one of them was mine. Did you…watch any?”

She shrugged. “I might have. I _am_ taking this seriously this time around.”

He reached out to her then stopped himself. “You’re not going to knock me around again are you?”

“Domestic violence isn’t funny,” she said sternly.

“ _You_ pushed me,” he told her. “In all the years, I’ve _never_ pushed you.”

That was true. He was a gentle man and kind. In all the years they were frustrated with each other, the last thing he would ever do would be to lay a hand on her in the wrong way. He was a good man for that.

She sighed. “I don’t feel like my best self and I’m sorry for pushing you.”

“I’m genuinely sorry I teased you,” he said earnestly and pulled her towards him for a hug. He wrapped his arms around her and she pushed her hands under his jacket to feel the strong muscles of his back. They swayed for a moment in her foyer at the bottom of the stairs. There were a few beats of calming silence before he broke it with his remark, “But you want me.”

She groaned. “ _David_ …”

He looked down at her face and she saw all the hurt in his eyes that lingered from some terrible things she had said and done to him. “Gillian…”

“I miss you,” she confessed. “I know that isn’t fair of me to say but I miss you. I didn’t expect it to be like this when we came back to work.”

“Like what?” he asked as he continued to search her face. For what he was hoping to find, she didn’t know but she assumed it was answers to how she had been feeling. Maybe he was looking for an invitation. “What did you expect?”

“I thought… Maybe like in May…”

“We had a lot of fun in New York but you told me quite firmly that I wasn’t welcome in your bed after that,” he reminded her as his arms dropped from around her and he stepped back. “You went on a vacation with a man who looks constantly surprised there’s a thumb in his _asshole_ and _furthermore_ that he _likes_ it.”

She stifled a laugh. “That’s _mean_.”

“I’ve seen pictures of the guy,” David told her. “That’s definitely the look.”

He made the same face that Gillian had seen Peter make in pictures and she laughed out loud.

“Don’t be mean,” she warned gently.

“I’m allowed to be mean about him,” he disagreed.

She took a long breath and she hoped he might end all this fighting by kissing her. At least if they were kissing, they weren't fighting anymore. She recalled that she had rebuffed his advances and he might not be up for being scorned again. This was confusing for her own heart to work through but to be on his side of it must be even worse.

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly.

David put a hand up to his ear. “What was that?”

She frowned. “I’m sorry.”

He shrugged. “Don’t worry about it, I guess.”

That wasn’t fair for him to be glib. It took only a moment and he was somehow able to get back whatever power she had gained by just a simple act of nonchalance.

She narrowed her eyes at him. “So you don’t care or you’re hurt?”

He reached down and adjusted himself. “I’m both. What’s it to you? You said you didn’t care.”

“I never said that!” she said as she took a step towards him. “I care.”

“You care about yourself and your career more than your future or happiness,” he told her snidely.

She held up her hands in defense. “Hey…”

“Don’t ask me how I’m feeling if you’re not open to hearing it,” he said with a shrug and brushed past her to her living room. “Any kids with you this time around?”

It was surprising this was the first time he asked her a question like that since they said hello to each other in wardrobe four weeks ago. He said a quiet greeting and looked at the space above her as yet another suit for Mulder was taken in to his frame by the costumer.

“No,” she said as she followed him to stand in the middle of the room. This felt just as awkward as their foyer presence. “I mean, Piper is here because she’s working-”

“She and I already talked,” he interrupted.

Gillian forgot they did that. “Right.”

“She’s out with friends,” he said as he looked around. “So just you?”

“I’m going to bring Nelson after our next break when I go back to London,” she explained. “Mark wasn’t okay with the boys coming over this time around… with school starting up and my hours.”

He almost looked sympathetic for a moment. “Right.”

She crossed her arms under her breasts and shivered. “I need to get dressed if we’re going to hash it out.”

“Why don’t you let me wash your back?” he offered again but she didn't think the offer was genuine this time around.

The tone of his voice was confusing to her and she didn't want sleep with him when he seemed to sort of hate her. That was the kind of thing a much younger version of herself would have been okay with.

She sighed. It would be easy to let him back into her bed and maybe get a better footing on where they were during this shoot. 

“You know why I haven’t said yes,” she told him.

David made a disappointed face. “It might be a great exercise in restraint just to have the bath. I’ve got a sore shoulder, you know.”

“This is the kind of thing cheaters do to say they aren’t cheating,” she said.

They both knew this because they used those excuses for themselves in the past with each other. They were loose excuses for being together without being together. Truth be told, some of the most sexy moments in her life were watching him touch himself while she did the same, across from each other while they tried not to kiss.

“Is that what you’re trying not to do?” he clarified. “Because then we should probably talk about New York-”

“I know what happened in New York…” she cut him off. “It was… wrong. He doesn’t deserve for me to lie to him. Or betray him...”

David sighed this time and she could hear his frustration. He looked at her like he was out of arguments. “I should go.”

She didn’t want him to leave. He had come to her twice to extend an olive branch of friendship. Even though both times he had turned it from possible reconciliation of a friendship to something sexual, she had to give it to him that he tried.

He walked past her and she grabbed his wrist. David looked down over his shoulder to her and she felt the smallness of her size amplified.

She opened her mouth to speak but she failed to find the words. He shook his head and began to walk away from her again.

“I was wrong,” she said.

David came back a step towards her. “About what?”

She looked at his face and saw that he was looking deep inside her eyes for answers. It was jarring. “I broke the promises we made… I was demanding. I stopped being the kind of person who was worth it.”

“I’m glad you’re able to admit that to yourself,” he told her. “I better call that Uber back.”

She tightened her grip around his wrist. “Don’t. Just stay a little longer.”

“What’s the fucking point, Gillian? You don’t want me here,” he said snidely and he pulled his wrist from her grasp. He reached into his pants pocket to pull out the phone he had called her from. “This isn’t my phone.”

“The girl you were with earlier?” she replied acerbically.

“You don’t get to be jealous,” he told her as he unlocked the phone. “Oh. This _is_ my phone.”

Gillian looked at it and saw the background had been changed to a picture of his kids and Brick. She liked that side of him that was sentimental about family. “You got a phone for while you were here?”

He shrugged. “Carolyn said it would be smarter than paying roaming fees. My bill last time we were here was nuts but I was here longer.”

David’s money manager disliked the frivolous spending he did when he was spoiling Gillian, often tried to extend tidbits of advice to her. Unfortunately, she and Carolyn had a strained relationship.

Gillian nodded and ignored the dig about how often she left to go back home.

“Can you stay?” she asked as she put her hand on his hip and stepped towards him.

The heat from his body was radiating towards her and she felt the familiar draw to him.

“Is it going to change anything if I do?” he asked sounding much more sober than when he arrived.

It wouldn’t and it was unfair of her to ask him to be the other man after she had told him how horrible it was for her when she was the other woman.

“No,” she answered honestly. “Maybe it would make you hate me a little more.”

“I don’t hate you,” he sighed as he turned to her and pulled her flush against his body.

That surprised her. She thought he had been trying to fuck her out of spite.

“Don’t you?” she questioned as she put her hands under his jacket.

She studied the fabric of his T-shirt because looking up at his eyes felt too personal right now. His body felt taught in all the ways that she liked about him. He had been swimming, boxing and running. He mixed up his work outs regularly to allow his muscles to continue to build and grow. In his fifties, he was an example of health and fitness but an aesthetic that was appealing with or without clothes on.

“Maybe I hate myself a little for letting it get away from me, but I don’t hate you,” he assured her. “I’m disappointed.”

Slowly, she looked up at him and sighed as her hands moved up his chest and to the back of his neck.

“What are you doing?” he asked but he knew.

“I want you to stay,” she asked as she pulled his head down towards hers. His lips brushed hers again and she felt her sex swell in anticipation. “Wash my back, fuck me tonight and stay…”

His tongue darted out to hesitantly taste her lip. “On _one_ condition.”

He smelled so good. His lips pressed against hers and she felt the burgeoning hardness of a cock that was meant to be inside her pressed against her belly. She wanted him so badly, she felt an ache and giddiness bubbling inside of her. His tongue slid along hers and he pushed her against the wall as he moved in a slow, dry hump against her. She felt sparks already and she whimpered into his mouth. When he broke the kiss, he grinned at her.

“Ready for my condition?”

She would promise anything at this point. He made her feel wild and feral while also helpless and wanton. This is how he convinced her in her thirties to do things that suited him over her own personal life. She stayed single when she wanted companionship but he was possessive over her personal time. Forget that he was married to someone else, she belonged to him.

“What?” she asked carefully.

“Don’t fall back in love with me if I do,” he told her.

Her eyes flickered up from his mouth to see the seriousness of his statement in his green orbs.

“Don’t fall back in love with you?” she repeated. “Who said I could?”

“I know you can’t fuck me without feeling something,” he reminded her. “If you do… I might fall back in love with you too.”

She kissed him again and remembered those love feelings. It was lust and pleasure wrapped up in intense emotional ties. They kissed with an angry undertone of two people who had too much left unsaid to one another. He ground into her and she spread her legs so she could feel her bare sex against his jeans. He pulled her leg over his hip and lifted her slightly. She cursed the clothing between them as she felt desperate for him to be inside of her already.

He pulled his mouth from hers first and looked at her seriously as his hips pushed against her. “Bath or sex first?”

“Why not both?” she asked with an impish grin.

His face lit up with a smile she hadn't seen on his face in too long.

“Both,” he agreed.


	3. Five Words

Reconciliation was the attempt from two parties to come together and find common ground from a strife that drove a wedge between them. Apologies and promises go hand in hand. A recognition of poor behaviour was the opening line and it was followed by a promise to be better.

What had transpired that evening was a mixture of hormones and close proximity confusing hurt feelings and frustrations. David kissed her long enough to make them both forget that they were at a point in their life that didn’t need the touch of a lover to gloss over what they had ignored for too long.

Right now, he was leading her up the stairs instead of following as he had so many times in the past. Her eyes were watching the muscles of his ass flex and move under his jeans with appreciation. He had a great body. The way he worked with his hands, how he strummed a guitar and when he rolled the sleeves up on a dress shirt… something in her belly flipped.

Somehow he looked delicious in everything he wore. The man was taking care of himself and her basic hormones got in the way of higher thinking. She wanted him in her bed and therefore she apologized to change his attitude towards her.

It was never enjoyable for either of them to experience a freeze out from the other and rare when she was on the receiving end of one. David had rarely ignored her over their history but when he had, it was for obvious reasons.

The first time was after she had gotten married over their Christmas break to another man and he had little time to adjust to the news. The thaw came when she told him she was pregnant. The next time was after she got involved with Rodney and he had recently gotten married. He had little patience for the man and nicknamed him Eight-Pack after what David described as ‘the only positive thing about the guy.’ The thaw came when he cornered her in a bathroom in an Emmy’s afterparty in 1997. He had kissed her before she could kiss her date for her win then preceded to ignore her until hours later. The thaw had been short lived as they filmed the movie while his desire for her ebbed and flowed.

As he reached the landing halfway up the stairs, David grinned. “Lloyd looks good. Keeping fit?”

Gillian reached the landing and grinned at him. “He’s the best kind of pet. He never shits on my rug and is always there to greet me when I get home.”

“Nelson shits on your rug because he’s got some displaced anger out of spending too much time with the dog sitter just in time to get comfortable and then brought back to your noisy house,” David replied dryly.

“It’s not noisy,” Gillian disagreed with a pout.

David made a face like he didn’t believe her. “Sure.”

“It’s not  _that_  noisy,” she confessed. “Dogs are supposed to like noisy.” 

“I think your dog is an eighty-year-old man trapped inside the body of a chocolate Frenchie,” he said and put his hand on her waist.

“Maybe that’s why he likes to watch me shower and undress,” she muttered seriously and David laughed. She realized that was funny and she laughed too. “I’m so tired. I didn’t mean that to be what I said.”

“Aren’t you known for that?” he teased. He pushed her against the space on the wall between the bugs in shadow boxes to kiss her neck. “A little?”

There was a definite hardness pushing into her belly and she arched her back to press herself against him. “It’s not always intentional…  _Oh_ ….”

David’s kisses moved down her neck and her collarbone towards the V in her robe where it crossed over. His hands made quick work of the tie in her sash and the robe fell open as he knelt in front of her. His face pressed into her abdomen and she shuddered in anticipation.  
  
It had been far too long since she felt the pleasure of a man’s mouth there. If she thought correctly, it would probably be since their tryst in New York. Gillian discovered quickly into their relationship that Peter wasn’t so fond of the act. She felt herself longing for the kind of man who felt like this was an act to bestowed upon a woman until she begged for him to stop. She longed for David’s touch, his presence and the way he made her feel as much as she wished she didn’t.

His tongue traced along her abdomen and down to her hip bone. He kissed and nipped at the skin in the territorial marking way he liked to. Her sexual urges took over her logical mind and allowed him to continue his journey towards her sex.

She felt her lips throb and a rush of excitement as he pressed his face into the small thatch of trimmed hair at the apex of her thighs.

“God I missed your smell,” he growled and his tongue darted between her lips to taste her. “You’re so wet already. I love it.”

She whimpered as his tongue slipped between her folds again and found her clit. She could feel him smiling before he pushed against her bundle of nerves. He was enjoying the small teases as much as she was.

He grinned as he pulled back and looked up at her with eyes that killed her. “Is this for me?”

The pattern on her robe caught the light in the hall and reflected off the wall. There was a shine of pale blue along the wood and she tried to recognize the beauty in that moment. With one hand, she ran her fingers through his hair while the other cupped his cheek.

“My body loves what you do to it,” she whispered.

He held her hips in his hands and shook his head at her. “Don’t use that word. It’s tainted.”

She understood what he meant. They had whispered that word in too many scenarios to each other as they made empty promises when they belonged to other people. It was odd to confess the love you felt for a person as they touched you everywhere. That loved flipped into anger and she felt it bubble up inside hours later with her clothes back on.

“It’s just my body,” she rationalized and he kissed the skin under her scar. “It’s always wanted you when it shouldn’t.”

David stood up and ran the back of his fingers up her abdomen to the underside of her breast. “Just not your heart.”

She felt her chest constrict and her chin wavered. “I’m not good with difficult scenarios.”

“I’ve met you,” he reminded her. “I know you like it your way. I know the emotions inside you flux and lash out if your precise needs aren’t met and I’ve seen you pout like nothing else when you can’t push the people in your life to get it.”

She pulled her robe closed. “Did you come here to attack me?”

“I came here to fuck you,” he said as he pulled it open again. “Don’t take that away from me too.”

“Why are you being  _mean_?” she asked as he looked at her exposed in front of him.

He grinned. “Don’t you like it when someone gives it back to you?”

She frowned. “Not really.”

“God you’re cute when you’re pouting,” he commented.

He leaned down and kissed her thoroughly with the slight taste of her on his tongue. He held her hands at her sides as she kissed him back. There was a power struggle between the desperation of her hormones and the guard she kept around her heart to keep herself a strong island. Her defences were down with him and he would always find a way in.

His hand released one of hers and slipped between their bodies to touch her where she wanted him the most. Two fingers pushed between her folds and she gasped as he found his way inside her. She felt another surge of excitement and he groaned into her mouth as he skillfully awakened the dormant needs that had gone unmet for too long.

He was another hit of a narcotic after a long sobriety. He was a taste of the liquor she had sworn off because of her inability to function with it in her system. He was a cigarette habit she tried to quit.

As his thumb circled her clit, she realized how tainted their love truly was. He could make her feel things everywhere with just a touch while she felt resentment towards him for needing to apologize. Couldn’t he just be there for her needs and allow her to live her life the way she wanted? Why did he have to demand so much from her?

Sharp pangs of pleasure spread through her womb and she felt herself swell as she approached a quick release. He must have felt it too because he increased his speed while lessening his pressure on her sex. It felt too good. She wanted to burst into pieces on that very landing where he had convinced her previously they would work it all out.

As her pleasure mounted, she wished they had. These kinds of experiences were too few and far between in her life. In the last twenty-five years, he was the man who made her feel the most. She wished it was anything but true and yet as she felt the peak of her orgasm approach, she accepted that it was.

“Fuck!” she cried as she broke the kiss.

The rush of her release ran through her body in different directions. She felt her knees get weak which was another common reaction her body had from his skilled touch.

“Let go,” he sighed as he watched her face with a grin.

She was completely letting go as she held on to his strong forearms as he held her upright while she broke apart internally, piece by piece. The contractions of her womb were just the beginning.

His fingers stayed inside of her until her body cooled slightly and when he pulled them from her, she winced at the loss.

“Are you going to make it up the stairs?” he asked as he stepped back slightly.

She caught herself on his chest and tried to steady her footing. She replied breathlessly, “I think so.”

David closed her robe and picked her up with ease into a cradle carry up the stairs. Gillian clutched her arms around his neck. She felt weightless and safe in his arms… another feeling that was scarce in her life.

“Isn’t this bad for your shoulder?” she asked as he reached the top of the stairs.

“You’re probably lighter than the weights I use,” he joked and walked them down the hall towards her bedroom. “I like the idea of using you as a body weight. I’ll get you to climb on my back later to do push ups.”

“Can you actually do that?” she asked as they walked through her bedroom where the tub awaited them.

“Of course I can,” he said assuredly. He walked them past her bed and set her down on the bathroom counter gingerly. “You wanna hop on right now or can I do something about the throbbing in my pants?”

Gillian waved her hand with a flourish to grant him permission to undress. It wasn’t a bad thing to watch. She could recall the number of times in her past watching him disrobe prior to a coupling. It was the precursor to something titillating and forbidden. In his younger years, he was less defined but angular still. He bulked up as he reached forty but in ways that showed his fitness level had increased. In almost every stage of his life, she was constantly in awe of how he took care of himself in different ways.

“Do you still do yoga?” she asked as he reached for his belt.

David nodded. “Yoga, Pilates, boxing, swimming, weights and running.”

“ _How_  do you have the time and energy for that?” she asked but her eyes were watching his zipper slide down the teeth.

He grinned as he dropped his jeans with his undershorts. “Did you always like to talk this much before fucking?”

She got off the counter and dropped the robe from her shoulders. “I forgot we weren’t involving any love in this. Get your ass in the tub.”

“That’s more like it,” he said and climbed in.

She placed their discarded clothing on the chair near the sink and turned to see him grinning at her.

“What?” she asked.

Usually these moments held something of quiet and confessional. They would offer an ‘I love you’ to the other before they proceeded to bring each other to the heights of ecstasy.

“I’m trying not to find you adorable as you organize before you let me touch you again,” he said with a shake of his head.

She sighed as she approached the tub. “You know that I can’t-”

“That’s not information that’s important for me to fuck you,” he cut her off. “I’m a cold-hearted asshole who just wants a piece of tail.”

“Oh right, that guy,” she scoffed. She stepped into the tub slowly and hissed as the water enveloped her. The smell of jasmine filled her senses and she relaxed into the heat.  
  
“Does it help you to know how my exercise routine keeps me in shape to help you come?”

She shook her head as she moved towards him in the water. “Sort of.”

“That’s some love shit that you need to leave out of this,” he said. “Remember when you used to need me to give you a release between scenes because you were wound so tightly? You hardly let me kiss you but you would need it over a chair like a bitch in heat.”

She felt indignance as he offended her. “Are you  _trying_  to make me hate you? That’s rude!”

“I’m trying to keep you from falling back in love with me,” he reminded her as he pulled her onto his lap. “Remember how that isn’t happening for us again?”

“Don’t turn me off by calling me a bitch in heat,” she argued.

She wasn’t totally angry but he wasn’t plying her with sweet words and promises as he had done in the past. Those moments were over for them.

“You were kind of a bitch… and you were needy for what I had,” he said with a sly grin. He aligned their sexes in the water and he pulled her hips so she slowly sunk down onto him. Her body adjusted slowly and she grunted when he was buried to the hilt.

“Remember how angry you were?”

“No.” She shook her head and she felt him flex a little. “I don’t remember being mad.”

His fingers pulled at her blonde tendrils that fell from the small bun at the base of her skull. “You were so cold towards me for a number of different reasons on and off for nine years.”

“I remember it being the other way around,” she confessed. “Feeling rejected by you and out in the cold more often than not.”

She shifted up and sank back down onto him. Even though their conversation was harsh and off-putting, her mind needed to hear this. She needed to be reminded why it wasn’t worth it. She could have him in her bed and not in her heart, separating the two as she had over the years.

She wasn’t over her frustrations with him. Her body was still wound tight and needed him to work out all of the kinks… Her mind flashed to a time when he displayed how much kink he needed to find a release and it had caused a brief interlude between their secret rendezvous. Her tastes, while bordering on unconventional, never quite aligned to where his addictions did.

David kissed her collarbone and down to her breasts. “You still liked me to fuck you in random bathrooms.”

“Does that make you feel good about yourself? To remind yourself that I wanted you?” she asked bitterly and he hummed into her skin. She shook her head as she thought back to how she felt then. “I don’t know why…. I guess my sense of worth was pretty low to let someone who disliked me-”

“I never  _disliked_  you, Gillian,” he said as he paused their movements. He took her nipple into his mouth and pulled the flesh through his teeth to cause her to whimper. “I always found you to be frustrating and a lot of work - even now - but I always  _liked_  you.”

She looked at him as he moved his mouth to the other breast to pay the same attention to it. “I don’t think I could say the same… I think I didn’t like you at times but I still needed you.”

“I didn’t like much of myself for a while either,” he reminded her. “Or maybe I loved myself too much…. I can’t decide which.”

He pushed his hips up and she grunted.

“Stop talking so much,” he told her and kissed her to prevent her from replying.

Their hips began to move in tandem as the water sloshed in the tub. She allowed the kiss to build and her arms stayed wrapped around his neck as she skillfully moved her hips towards him before sliding up. His cock was slick with her arousal and they were moving in all the right ways to get her to find her release.

He was grabbing at the flesh on her back and his mouth was planted between her breasts as they bobbed in the water. She loosened her grip around his neck and dug her nails into the muscles on his shoulders.

His jaw went slack as his eyes closed and she dropped her head back as the waves of pleasure began to wash over her. She longed for the stamina of David, how he expanded her with his girth and the way he made her insides hurt just a little. He was the perfectly cut key to the lock inside of her when she truly wanted to let go.

His breath was hot on her neck and he grunted as she sped up her hips. The sound of the water competed to with lyrics of the song playing as the music filled the room.

 _“Gave you up ‘bout_ twenty one _times_  
_Felt those lips tell me_ twenty one _lies_  
_You’ll be the death of me_  
_Sage advice_  
_Love, loving you could make Jesus cry”_

“Your musical tastes have gotten eclectic in the last year,” he commented as they continued to move.

 _“I never needed you like I do right now,_  
_I never needed you like I do right now,_  
_I never hated you like I do right now,_  
_‘Cause all you ever do is make me”_

“I have a very  _intimate_  relationship with my iTunes,” she confessed as she paused at the top of his cock. She was breathing heavily as she felt closer to her orgasm. “I…  _oh_ …. the songs it suggests seem to have a theme and… it’s  _oh_ … a good play list….”

David pulled her down quickly along his shaft. He ground his pelvis into hers as her clit made contact with his lap. She felt sparks through her body. “If ‘Stay with Me’ comes on I’m  _leaving_.”

She grinned at him but her expression turned quickly to pleasure as he moved his right hand from her hip to find her clit with his thumb.

“Oh!”

“I wanna watch you come like this,” he said as he applied just the right pressure she needed. “I missed this.”

“Me too…” she sighed. She opened her eyes to watch him as she found the pleasure inside begin to take over her core and spread through her body. “Fuck!”

“Keep going?” he asked as he continued to work the bundle of nerves at her centre.

She nodded as the agony of her release lingered out of reach. She needed something to push her over the edge to get a bigger delivery to her bliss. Sex with David was a drug and she was definitely an addict. This was an addiction that needed to be fed frequently and she found herself feeling lost without it. She realized that the drug and the treatment were the same. Abstinence from it wasn’t working. It just made her punchy and less patient with the people she needed in her life. She felt more desperate for the thing she craved.

Here she was with his cock inside of her and the thrill of his touch bringing her close to release but she felt something lacking.

He must have suspected it too because his other hand grasped at the flesh of her ass before he inserted one finger all the way into her back door.

“ _Ah_!” she cried out.

She broke apart all over again but harder. She felt like she was going to dissolve into the water around her but her flesh held her insides within its constraints.

As the rush spread through her body, another one began and she wondered if her bones were going to liquify from the shock to her system. It had been far too long in the bed of a man who somehow fathered five children but fumbled his way around her body.

She kept hoping things would improve but all she did was lower her standards. David was raising the bar back up and she prayed to God she could experience this more than just tonight. She hoped he wouldn’t cut her off after he had finally given her a fix.

She stilled her hips for a moment as she came down from her release but before she could cool down, David was retracting his hands from inside her and turned her onto her knees to face away from him.

“Oh…” she said in realization as her hands gripped the side of the tub.

He was back inside her quickly and fucking her with the pent-up frustration of a man who had been sidelined by a break up after a long affair that should never have happened. He was pounding into her hard and slow. He was making every stroke count as he gripped her hips with a selfish need to find his own release.

It almost made her feel better that it was like this right now. The tenderness was too close to home. It made her long for promises that they might not keep - could not keep.

Her fingers clutched the edges of the modern claw foot tub as he continued to push in and out of her repeatedly. She felt her insides beginning to churn. His cock was reaching her cervix as every punishing thrust hit into her.

Just as she felt like she needed to ask him to stop, he grunted as he hit her one last time to empty himself inside her. He put his head on her back as he regained his strength and breathed heavily into the skin that longed for the warmth of the water.

“I gotta pull out at some point but I don’t want to ever leave you,” he confessed.

Gillian looked at him over her shoulder. “That sounds like mushy love shit that you don’t want any part of.”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” he jested as he pulled her back into his lap as sat back on his haunches. “I like how tight and warm it is in there.”

“In there,” she repeated as she glanced over her shoulder. “For a song writer and novelist, you really know how to flatter a woman into round two.”

David shook his head against her back as his hands cupped her breast and abdomen. “Round two? I’m a dirty old man… isn’t that what you called me?”

She sighed as he pulled out and she felt a sudden loss that was familiar and metaphoric for everything else in her life. The need for another high, another orgasm hit her suddenly. The realities needed to be washed away by their tainted love. It was that addictive side to both of their personalities that made them a bad mix.

Gillian stood up and carefully removed herself from the tub to clean herself off in the shower. When she exited the shower stall, David was standing in front of her with the water draining loudly.

“What?” he asked dumbly.

“I called you a dirty old man in bed as a joke,” she said as she wrapped a towel around her body.

Her body cooled from his touch and all she felt now was anger. It wasn't the kind of anger that lead to sex but the kind that pushed him out of her house in the middle of the night. This wouldn't be the first time.

“I can’t make comments about shit you said before?” he asked as he grabbed a towel from the rack.

“This is too complicated,” she muttered as she walked across the bathroom.

David caught her upper arm with his hand and pulled her towards him. “Don’t fucking say that.”

“What am I supposed to say?” she asked as she yanked her arm from his grip. She took off her towel and replaced it with her robe quickly. “You say whatever you want and make jokes while telling me love isn’t a part of this?”

She stormed out of the bathroom in search of a fresh pair of panties and night clothes but he was hot on her heels.

“Love isn’t supposed to be a part of us anymore, Gillian,” he agreed as he followed her into the bedroom. “Because  _you_  made that choice.”

She took a wavering breath. “David you pushed me away. You chose to leave me to fend for myself when-”

“Don’t bring up that shit anymore, Gillian,” he cut her off. “I  _swear_  to God. It’s been over a year. You  _gotta_  let that go!”

David’s stylist had been with them for years and even worked on the show. The disagreement between the two women had been the straw that broke the camel’s back when she expected David to break up a fight he wanted no part of.

“It hurt my feelings!” she yelled at him.

“So has a lot of shit you’ve done but I got over it! That’s what being a grown-up is!” he yelled back.

This was the volatile part of their relationship that didn’t work for her. It felt too emotional and erratic without the outcome she wanted. She didn’t like things when they didn’t go her way. She wanted to feel adored and worshipped. She deserved that much at this point in her life.

“You can’t just expect everyone to be as open and wise in their Buddhist realizations of new life auras or whatever shit you picked up in California,” she countered. “Some of us aren’t as big of people.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked as he put his hands on his hips over his towel.

They were both still naked and their emotions were at the surface. It was the worst time to argue. She couldn’t close herself off from him when she could see the outline of his cock through a damp towel.

“You had some awakening in your fifties that made you a little  _too_  superior,” she replied bitingly.

“Is that actually what your deal is?” he asked. “I’m too aware of my own shit now and lost the pompous side of my dangerous personality as you described it?”

He was referring to an interview from the late nineties where she described the unpredictable behaviours of people in her past. They didn’t give quite enough attention or love. They made their partner feel not quite good enough, like a failing child but also needing them.

“That wasn’t just about you,” she lied.

“Sure, well…I guess your book was a bunch of bullshit then,” he muttered.

“What did you just say to me?” she asked as she stepped towards him.

“Okay, first of all, you don’t scare me with that and second of all, you heard me,” he replied calmly. “You’re full of shit if you think you can write about self-help but you can’t actually help yourself.”

“Don’t do this-” she started.

“You’re disappearing in front of me!” he cried desperately. “You’re losing everything about yourself all over again and I don’t even think he makes you happy!”

She put her hands up. “This was a mistake.”

He let out a quick breath through his nose. “Why? Because I can see everything about you that you can’t? Or that I’m not afraid to say it?”

He grabbed her wrists and shook her a little. “Wake up, Gillian! You’re not in love with him!”

“Well…” She turned her face from him and fought the tears in her eyes. “At least I’ve never felt like I hated him.”

He dropped her wrists and he ran his hands down his face. “You think that feeling towards me is hate but it’s not. How can someone who has read so many fucking books on emotional discovery not understand her own damn self at fifty years old?”

“Fuck you,” she replied. “I’m not fifty yet.”

He held his hands up. “Oh  _excuse_  me. I didn’t mean to insult you by  _aging_  you one year.”

She scoffed as she pushed on his chest lightly and he pulled her into his body for another crushing kiss. This was the worst time and the most unconventional foreplay of her life but somehow it made sense for them. It bothered her that she found him to be frustrating and desirable at the same time. Everything she read in her life about relationships would encourage only healthy, positive and fulfilling relationships. If she described this conversation, it would sound like the opposite of all that good advice.

His fingers pulled at the sash on her robe again and she broke the kiss.

“David,” she shook her head. “We  _can’t_  keep doing this.”

He looked down between them where his flesh was halfway to being ready again. “Sure we can.”

She shook her head with a slight laugh. “You’re so proud of yourself.”

“I’m proud of it as a separate entity from myself,” he explained simply. “I cannot control its reactions nor would I want to take any responsibility for it when exceeds expectations.”

“ _Exceeds_?” she queried. “Is that what you think is happening?”

He kissed her again and his hands discarded the robe she had put on to cover herself with earlier. It was left on the floor at their feet as he pushed her into the mattress and climbed on top of her. His mouth never left hers in all of this as another accomplished act of multitasking.

He was making her swell in anticipation for another round. She wanted him again but this time as a lover and not as some revenge fuck as a way to say goodbye. Neither of these were healthy options and she broke the kiss.

“No!” she cried out and his hands stilled at her breast. “David… We can’t keep doing this! I have obligations… I have fucking obligations to myself and other people! I can’t keep wanting you or some version of you that breaks my heart every three to six months!”

“That’s rich coming from the woman who disintegrated mine and went on some public frolic through Portofino with a man who seems to have no skill or desire for public displays of affection unless he’s calling into your vagina by the pool in front of a crowd,” David bit back.

“He wasn’t…” Gillian started but she stopped.

She didn’t want to defend him to David any more than she wanted to defend David to Peter. If she opened those doors, it would be a never ending flow of insecurities from either side of why she kept half-choosing them. It had to stop. This had to stop sometime.

“David…”

His mouth cut her off before she could add any more reasons why not. They kissed and moved against each other on the bed. It was unfair how much half of her brain was telling her that this had to stop while the other half was asking for more and more. No wonder people called her neurotic and a mess. She couldn’t even make up her mind in between kisses.

When he pulled away, he looked at her squarely in the eyes. “I know this is more than just sex for you-”

“I told you I wouldn’t fall back in love with you,” she interrupted. “I won’t.”

“Well…” He made a face as if he didn’t believe her. "I also said you meant nothing to me coming back for this season and we know that's a lie."

“Then get off me if you don’t believe me,” she said bitingly. “I wouldn’t want you to fall back in love with me too.”

He scoffed. “Gillian…”

“I’m serious, David,” she said sternly. “This has to end sometime. If it’s just desire inside of us, we can be grown-ups for once in our lives and stop this.”

“You’re such a complicated woman,” he sighed as he moved off of her.

He settled on his side and looked down as he took in the sight of her body. Even being observed by him made her feel wet and wanton.

“Why are you still here if I’m such a mess?” she asked as she looked at the erection asking for attention between them under his towel. “How do you still get hard for a woman who clearly makes you disappointed and unappreciated? That makes you feel nothing? Is it because of the way I look? Is it sex-sense-memory or something?”

He had told the San Diego Comic Con Panel how little he felt when she signed back on for this season. When she read the quote, she felt hurt because at the time they were still supposed to mean something to each other. She didn't call to ask him to clarify the quote. She went into filming with the idea that they might be on good terms but found quickly that they weren't. 

“Do you think this is just desire?” he asked her.

She reached out to pull at his towel and his hand caught her wrist. He pulled her underneath him and kissed her in a way that reminded her of their ‘last times’ together when they knew they had to stop meeting in untoward places and sneaking around. There was a passion to his kisses that was unmatched to any other man who touched her.

When his mouth left hers he looked at her seriously. “I need you to shut up a minute-”

“I-”

“No,” he cut her off. “You keep insisting that we’ve wronged each other so many times over the last twenty-five years. It’s like you fell and smacked your head, forgetting all the good shit that was between us. I’ve broken every obligation in the last two and a half decades with you and you don’t see me wallowing or punishing myself with the wrong person in my bed. I’m still here. And you love me.”

His hand moved between them and touched her where she was still wet or maybe she had begun to feel the desire for him start again… the emotional and physical was all mixed together. David was the master of going at it all night long. He was in for marathons and not sprints towards release.

“What is this?” he asked as his fingers brushed along her swollen sex. Suddenly, she felt how turned on she was for him and her cheeks flushed with embarrassment. “What is this Gillian? It sure as shit isn’t just desire.”

He opened his towel and brushed the head of his member against her folds. She whimpered in response.

“Yes?” he asked.

Such a gentleman to ask her for the green light after fucking her backwards in a clawfoot bathtub. Once she said no, he wouldn’t continue anything sexual until she said yes. ‘No’ or ‘stop’ was the red flag and he had to hear her consent.

“Gillian, yes?”

She nodded and he pushed the head just inside. As he slid all the way in, she hissed her approval.

“Yessssss,” she sighed. “Oh… oh god yes.”

He pulled out almost completely before sliding in again to cover her body with his. She felt automatically safe and warm under him and no longer at odds with herself.

“I want you,” he said as he pulled out. “To be honest with yourself right now.”

He pushed back in hard and she whimpered. She couldn’t be honest anymore without realizing that too many relationships that failed were with dangerous men. She was still repeating the patterns of her younger self. That was the young woman who gave up her likes and dislikes to adopt the role of the perfect girlfriend for the person sharing her bed. Before too long that she found herself resenting them and the love they didn’t quite provide enough of. They were dangerous.

For all his polite English upbringing and desire for an order of things, Peter was a dangerous man. He made her feel not quite good enough and that his attentions could be given to someone else more deserving. When Peter spoke down to her or rolled her eyes after she spoke when he thought she wasn’t looking, his true self was evident. David had evolved from being that kind of man. He paid complete attention to her when they were together. He was willing to sacrifice attention from his books, music and television aspirations to talk about them as an official item. He protected their privacy time and time again so she could feel secure that the outside world wouldn’t intrude.

“Honesty, Gillian…” he prompted as he pumped again.

“I can’t give you up like I thought,” she told him as he punctuated every third word with his cock.

He kissed her shoulders as he moved in and out of her. He nipped at the skin that would be covered by her alter egos sharp business suits the following morning. No one would know that as she stood with the serious face of Dana Scully, his mouth had tasted her everywhere. It wasn’t exactly a well-kept secret but it wasn’t exactly broadcast when they arrived looking and smelling like sex was just had in a car. No one would call them out tomorrow when they arrived on set with the affability evident between them. At least, she hoped there would be a thaw between them after this.

“Touch yourself, Gillian,” he whispered to her.

She looked up at him as he pumped in and out. “I can’t…”

“Why?” he asked as he continued to move.

“I need to know we’re okay,” she whispered and her cheeks flushed.

He stopped moving and looked at her with concern. “Did you fall back in love?”

She felt a tear escape her left eye and fall down her cheek. “I'm trying to figure that out.”

He grinned at her. “About time.”

“I don’t know where to go from here,” she said.

David looked down at her breasts, her abdomen and then to where their bodies were joined. “You want to be on top?”

She chuffed a laugh. “No… I mean yeah I could but… what do I do about-”

“If you have concerns for him while I’m still inside you, then we need to have a conversation about the rules of sex,” he cut her off. “Don’t concern yourself with  _him_  right now.”

She shook her head. “That’s not what I mean…”

He sighed and started to move out of her but she caught his waist. He looked frustrated and he was twitching inside. “What?”

“I mean… I want this, all of this, but what do I do when filming ends and I have to be in London without you?” she asked weakly.

“We see each other more than five times a year like adults do,” he said as he moved back all the way inside of her. “I’ve told you I’d be willing to spend more time in New York if you would.”

“ _Then what_?”

He sighed. “Maybe I could make you come a few more times before we have this conversation so you’re satiated and more pliable to my suggestions,” he coaxed and she looked off to the side as she considered his suggestion. “Touch yourself.”

He took her finger and put it in his mouth to moisten the pad before guiding it back to her centre.

The first touch was always a slight jolt to her system. David smiled as she closed her eyes and she felt her body respond to her own touch quickly. It was four circles over her bundle of nerves before he pulled back to watch at a better angle. She opened her eyes to see him holding the base of his swollen flesh and his jaw slack.

“Keep going,” he told her quietly when her hand stilled. She moved it in the pattern that aided her release and his chest heaved a long breath out. “I really can’t get enough of watching you do that…”

She took her breast in her palm and pinched her own nipple just slightly because she knew he loved that too. The act of gratifying oneself when alone was a necessity to release tension and quell desires that were no longer able to be pushed aside. During sex, watching a man like him touch himself as he observed her own actions just made it even sexier. There was enormous trust between them that built prior to these acts but restraint as well. He could only refrain from involving himself in her pleasure for so long until she became too desirable.

The fact that he had been touching himself earlier that day in his trailer after making out with her for the afternoon turned her on. Take after take, she had seen no signs of want from him towards her and there was a hollowness to his eyes after James called ‘cut.’ However, after she heard the end moments as he pleasure himself in his trailer, she felt her urge for him go from an itch that needed to be scratched to a madness of her own needs that she could no longer ignore.

She was wet and aching for him to possess her body completely. The craving for him only got stronger with every pass of her hand across her clit. There were tingling nerves in her toes as she began to climb towards the cliffs of her tumble down into ecstasy. It was burning in her belly while her chest felt hot with anticipation. She wanted him so badly, again and again.  
  
“Are you thinking about me while you do that?” he asked with a grin.

She nodded as she pushed her breast up with her hand and felt the weight of it in her palm. “ _Yes_ …”

He stroked himself slowly as his eyes moved from her sex up to her chest. “Be honest… when was the last time you didn’t think of me when you did that?”

That might be too much to share when she didn’t know what their future held. Had she thought of him when she came from her own hand in the last few months since their night in New York City? Most definitely. Had she thought of him when with another man? That wasn’t something she could deny but she wouldn’t admit that now.

She laughed and took her hand from her sex to climb into his lap. He grinned as he put his hands on her ass while she moved her hips up in line with the tip of his cock.

“When?”

She sighed. “After the first day of filming…”

He stilled her from sliding down. “I gotta know. Either you haven’t come in three weeks or you haven’t thought of me in three weeks?”

“Two days ago,” she admitted. “While I was memorizing my lines for today’s scenes.”

David grinned even wider into a full smile. He pulled her hips down and she gasped. Her body was so ready to come. She was swollen and tight as yin to his broad and turgid yang.

He pushed up a little and she whimpered again. “I love that sound. It makes me so hard for you.”

His mouth kissed the skin on her collarbones and found the nerves on her neck that made her moan. Teeth scraped along her flesh and she realized there might be marks she would have to explain to makeup in the morning. That was the least of her concerns when he was making her feel everything while forgetting anything outside of this moment.

He slipped his hand between the cheeks of her ass and pressed his finger to the entrance to her back door as she continued to slide up and down on his member. It was perfect and exquisite. If this was going to be the last time two people had sex, made love or fucked, this should be how it was done.

“Tell me you’ll be here in the morning,” she whispered against his cheek.

“I’ll be here when you wake up,” he promised without missing a beat.

“And at the end?” she asked.

She meant the end of filming, the end of her relationship with Peter and the end of their promo tours. She wanted him to commit and maybe that was asking too much. She had burned him pretty badly last fall.

“You know my conditions,” he countered as he pulled back to look at her in the eye. “You gotta say those five words.”

The look in his eyes was challenging and authoritative. He wasn’t going to commit without a statement from her. She had to say goodbye to the writer/producer with extravagant tastes and somewhat skewed views on women. Peter’s ex-wife was royalty. She ran in fancier circles than actors and musicians. The man loathed poor cooking and preferred a Mercedes taxi over the personal escort of his wife coming to pick him up because it was a Smart Car.

David was definitely the better choice but less glamorous. His life had been more in the public eye with more scandals and embarrassment. Clearly, he had extracted himself from all of that with a better understanding and admirable humility. The man had changed himself regardless of how it was going to affect his career. He chose to do something that could make him possibly fail publicly but he wanted to at least try. He was someone she was proud of, no matter what the uptight people in her recent social circle said about him.

“I have always loved you?” she guessed.

That was the truth. There were different versions of love over the last two and a half decades but deep down she always loved him. Once she could appreciate him as a friend, that love changed everything. It turned her life upside down and transformed what she thought she wanted.

David’s finger pushed inside her anus and she cried out.

“ _Fuck_  you you  _fucking_  fucker!” she gasped.

“That’s good but those aren’t them,” he retorted.

She paused as she looked at him. “I never stopped loving you.”

“Music to a man’s ears,” he chuckled and kissed her solidly.

He pushed up his hips as his finger pushed deeper inside. He thrust up as his finger found the spot inside her back door that made everything feel like it was on fire. David was a dirty old man but apparently, that’s exactly what she wanted and needed to feel satiated. It was all too much and everything she wanted as she found her orgasm suddenly taking over her body.

She felt the orgasm spread from each place he touched inside and out. David grunted and thrust once more to ride the waves of her orgasm with her. She felt him emptying himself as she clenched and spasmed around him.

They sat panting on her bed with the music filling the room. Instead of their back and forth, she tried to revel in the euphoria of what just transpired. He was grinning at her and she could see something else in his eyes.

“What?” she asked.

He kissed her. “I’m just hoping that wasn’t the sex talking…”

“It wasn’t,” she replied. She clenched her chin and breathed out through her nose. “You definitely are a fucker.”

He kissed her shoulders and along her sternum. “I’m not going to pressure you. I hope you aren’t going to ask me to be the other woman. I’d be a terrible mistress.”

“I’m sure you’re better than I was,” she sighed. She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed his cheek.

He rubbed his hands up her bare back. “You weren’t so bad.”

They comforted each other for another few beats before he laid her on her back and pulled out. She grabbed the towel on the bed and used it to clean herself. David took the towel from her to clean himself off and he walked it over to the laundry hamper.

When he returned with his underwear in hand, she was grinning at him for the gesture.

“What?”

“I like seeing the tidy side of you,” she replied with a shrug.

“I’m a much more organized person after I’ve had sex than when I’m anticipating sex,” he reminded her and she laughed.

She left to use the bathroom and when she returned, he was setting himself up his side of the bed. “Are you going to sleep over?”

“Yeah,” he said happily. “Is there an extra toothbrush here?”

“I think there’s a spare in the drawer,” she said as she donned her robe.

He followed her into the bathroom where she found an extra toothbrush in the drawer between the two sinks. He tore apart the packaging and discarded it in the bin. There were a few moments of silence as David stood over ‘his’ sink while she moved the motorized brush across her own mouth.

“I feel so honoured I got a spare  _electric_  brush,” he said after he spit into the sink.

She spit into her sink and washed her brush off. “I like you in my spaces.”

It felt so much more natural to have him around than most other people. He got on her nerves the least, he understood her mood swings and he was more gentle with her feelings. In return, she understood where he was emotionally just by being near him. He was more calm and kind in his later years. He still had bouts of random moments that were out of character and loud but mostly, he was a soothing presence that she had missed.

David rinsed his toothbrush off as well and put it in the cup with hers. “Are you worried about the repercussions of us?”

There was a beat of silence while she thought about it. It would once again distract from her career. She didn’t know how they were going to work out all the kinks with her kids and their living logistics.

“Yes,” she answered slowly. “I’m scared.”

“But?”

“I think I’d be happy to be scared a little,” she replied.

He pulled her towards him and kissed the top of her head. “I guess we’ll just see how it goes this time. No pressure.”

She looked up at him with her hands under her chin between their bodies. “Is it still tainted?”

He nodded. “Of course but we’ll be better for it.”

She felt the promise in his words fill her with emotion and she relaxed into his embrace. At least they could try to go forward from here with hope.


End file.
